Game Details

Let's be honest: naming a game Thief brings some expectations along with it. This Eidos Montreal-developed reboot of the classic franchise doesn't share the development pedigree of either of the first two Thief titles (Looking Glass Studios) or Thief: Deadly Shadows (Ion Storm), but by taking the name, it's placing itself in the same lineage as those well-remembered progenitors of the stealth genre.

The new Thief is separated by almost ten years from the last game in the series. Game design has come a long way in that time, and stealth gameplay specifically has come to be a commonplace addition to many other genres since the first Thief helped originate the concept in 1998. Rather than comparing this reboot to the outdated memories (and the very different gaming landscape) of those original titles, then, it's better to ask whether Thief can stand on its own as a modern game, regardless of the baggage of its franchise.

In short, the answer is no. It really can't.

Let's start with the story, or what bits of it are comprehensible, at least. In the prologue, we've barely been introduced to Garrett's new thieving partner, the appropriately spunky and troubled Erin, when we see her falling through a skylight and into an incredibly convenient energy-summoning ritual being performed by a group of mysterious hooded figures. (Is there any other kind of hooded figure?) Garrett is knocked out and awakens a year later to a city transformed by The Gloom, a combination of the bubonic plague and some sort of horrible mental disease that is ravaging the vaguely Victorian, vaguely steampunk citizens of the town.

From there, the game tries its best to weave together an incredible number of disparate plot threads: the mystery of Garrett's disappearance (and convenient year-long amnesia); the whereabouts of Erin; rising civil unrest against an overbearing Baron driven by The Gloom; an ongoing feud with Garrett's "Thief-taker General" nemesis; the appearance of red-eyed, shambling, zombie-like creatures; the meaning of a frequently recurring, white-tinted dreamscape (spoiler alert: it's an allegory for not much at all, really); and a mysterious ethereal force called Primal that's shoehorned in for good measure ("mystical nonsense" is a phrase that kept appearing in my notes as I played the game).

This would be a lot to hold together for a well-written game, but it becomes downright impossible for Thief, which is practically drowning in characters that loudly tell players what is happening rather than showing anything resembling real character development. The Thief-taker General is a particularly scenery-chewing antagonist, but friendly fence Basso and spiritual/political leader Orion also do their best to play as flat stereotypes whose every move can be predicted about five minutes in.

After following the tattered threads of this story through some predictable twists in a brothel, an abandoned asylum, a cavernous underground city, and a ridiculously vast wooden ship, I was hoping for a conclusion that at least brought some closure, if not some meaning, to the preceding cavalcade of events. I don't mind telling you, though, that I could not make the slightest sense out of the game's concluding cut scene. I don't mean that in the "Oh, that's interesting and could be interpreted in a number of ways" sense. I mean it in the "I have no idea what is happening right now, unless maybe time travel and possibly teleportation are involved somehow" sense.

Even this confusing mess of a plot might be somewhat forgivable if Thief were able to build an interesting, engaging world for its characters to traipse about in. Unfortunately, the city that serves as the game's hub is pretty lifeless, with ridiculously broad incidental characters that seem to come out of nowhere amid the general emptiness. These token citizens gesticulate wildly with vaguely human motions as they loudly pronounce their actions, giving generally horrid vocal performances and engaging in heavy-handed scripted moments. The seemingly random pans and camera angles that accompany some of the scripted cut scenes don't help matters, especially when keeping things in Garrett's first-person perspective would have been both less distracting and simpler.

Even when not acting out a script, some citizens seem to have been plopped down in the city completely randomly. At a few points, I stumbled upon the same Victorian-dressed couple, apparently happy to be just standing together in the middle of the night, near the end of an alley, staring vaguely into the middle distance and swaying in an idle animation. This handling of non-player characters would have been embarrassing in an early PlayStation 2 game; these days it's downright unforgivable.

Speaking of unforgivable bits, I'd be remiss not to say a few words about the horrendous sound balancing in the game. Sometimes a character's words would be drowned out by the background music despite him standing just a few feet away. Other times a conversation I had overheard through a hole in the wall would continue at full volume even as I stepped away and walked down the hall. Often, unmistakable on-screen actions like floors collapsing or fires raging would go by with nary a sound effect. Less often (but still too often) two incidental conversations would overlap with each other, both at full volume, even as I stepped away from one and right next to the other. I could forgive a couple of these snafus, but the audio issues in Thief were frequent enough to take me right out of the moment with surprising regularity.

On the visual side, the PlayStation 4 version I tested was surprisingly stuttery, with noticeable slowdown and frame rate drops during many sections. Load times were long enough to be annoying as well; every death or new section of town meant a wait of 10 to 15 seconds.

Disjointed gameplay

If most everything about the plot is consistently hard to stomach consistently, the basics of Thief's gameplay are at least not actively painful. True to its stealth heritage, much of Thief's gameplay involves sticking to the shadows and avoiding the notice of frequent guards that stand between you and your target (while maybe picking up a few treasures laying about along the way). Garrett has obviously been taking lessons from the likes of Assassin's Creed and Uncharted because he can now run along at a good clip, clamber up ledges and convenient crates, and use a claw to hoist himself higher (though he can only attach to hatched wall panels that literally glow blue, in case you had any chance of missing them). Garrett also has a new sort of stealthy duck-and-swoop gliding move that lets him dart quickly between bits of shadow.

The interface does a pretty good job of giving you visual cues as to when you're well hidden and when you're fully visible in the light, and it's decently forgiving in giving you a chance to quickly duck back out of the way when a guard catches you out of the corner of his eye. The game also gives you a number of methods for distracting guards; you can snuff out the candles and torches that reveal your position to them or take them out stealthily with a well-placed arrow or silent rear takedown.

Still, I found it much too tough to get through most areas without being seen. Part of this is due to the game's generally linear level design that favors narrow hallways or alleyways and often leaves just one or perhaps two feasible paths to your goal (though there are plenty of dead-end treasure rooms along the sides). Guards never seem to be in short supply, and dragging them away from their companions and the strategic choke points that they cling to isn't a walk in the park, even with a pretty handy map and on-screen indicator for where you should or could be going. If you do manage to lure them away from their post, it doesn't take much at all to alert their seemingly heightened sense to your presence, either.

Once you're spotted by these guards... well, one of three things will happen. If you're spotted by a lone guard with no backup, you'll probably be able to take him out by activating your time-limited "focus" powers and conking him a couple of times with your blackjack. If you're totally overwhelmed and cornered by enemies with no easy way out, you'll probably just be killed before you can even draw back one of a wide variety of useful arrows.

More often than you should, though, you'll simply be able to use your incredible sprinting speed to run away from your attackers and go back into hiding. Guards seem to forget about you almost immediately when you slide out of their view, to the point where you can often turn a corner, leap behind a box, and watch as the guard stands there looking confused as to where you possibly could have gone.

Many times, after being spotted, I was able to simply dash toward the next objective on my heads-up display and make it there before the guards could converge, ending their pursuit with a convenient loading screen. Once, I was able to pickpocket my target even after he had spotted me and then run away down the hall and into the safety of a closet before his guards could lay a hand on me. In one particularly silly situation, I ran away from a guard and made a circuit through two doors at the opposite end of a room until I was able to loop back around to the rear of my assailant and surprise him. The sheer exploitability of this braindead AI doesn't only kill the stealth gameplay, but also the entire mood of the game (to its credit, the game does offer a mode where being spotted leads to instant death, which might actually be preferable).

Enlarge/ Oh great, less sneaking and more running through fire. Just what I wanted.

For a game that's supposedly about stealth, there are also way too many sections in Thief where Garrett is all alone and forced to engage with some extremely unengaging puzzles and platforming bits. Oh look, here's a section where you have to turn cranks to rearrange some moving staircases and create a path up a tower. Here's a locked door that requires you to backtrack a few dozen rooms to find its key. Here's yet another cavernous room where you have to find the well-hidden exit point to move on to the next room—or else wander around lost for a half-hour or so (this happened to me twice).

There's the random "action" scene where you have to run away as a burning bridge collapses around you—because that's the kind of thing Call of Duty players like, right? There are the downright pointless sections where you have to sidle along some exposed pipes from a third-person perspective because hey, if Nathan Drake can do it, dangit, Garrett can too! There's the extremely claustrophobic "open world" inter-chapter hub where you can break into random people's houses and pick up their valuables, Legend of Zelda style.

There are way too many sections in the game where it feels like a producer was just trying to check off some hot gameplay element from some other title or genre on some checklist. Not only are none of these sections particularly well done, but they all take away from any sense of tension or flow you might have been feeling from the decently executed stealth sections.

It all contributes to an overall feeling of a disjointed game that doesn't really know what it's doing or what it wants to be. Which is a shame, because there are bits and pieces at the core of Thief that could have been salvaged together into a decent overall game. As it stands, the new Thief is a confusing, confused mess that doesn't live up to its namesake.

The good

Garrett's new duck-and-swoop move is pretty slick

Decent interface for stealth maneuvers

The bad

The plot is an incoherent mess

Seriously, the ending didn't make a lick of sense

Hackneyed writing and wooden performances

Level design is much too linear

Guards are too sensitive to your every movement

Guard AI is easy to outrun and easier to fool

Lots of badly done, out-of-place platforming and puzzle bits

The ugly

Why does every game have to have some mystical ghost nonsense these days?

Verdict: Go buy Dishonored instead. If you already own Dishonored, just play it again.

Bummer, I was really looking forward to the reboot! I loved the old Thief and all the required stealth strategy. It was fun to sneak up on a guard and thwack him and drag the body out of the way. The chatter between guards was funny. The stealth was difficult but not impossible. The AI of NPC's was rather good. The story was good. It was a nice deeply immersive experience different from the run at the enemy and blast them away like other first person shoots. Assassin's Creed was somewhat similar but not as much fun as Thief.

Thief 3 was an embarrassing shoehorn—a feature-stripped game that defined "console-itis," with its awkwardly bad zoning and terrible tiny level segments. It was a bad Thief game, especially after the stone-cold perfection that was Thief 2.

"Mystical Ghost Bullshit" is nothing new to the Thief series. As the City Watch is the new incarnation of the Hammerites it sounds like whatever the "Mystical Ghost Bullshit" is it's the new incarnation of the Trickster/Pagans.

>>>Verdict: Go buy Dishonored instead. If you already own Dishonored, just play it again.

Yikes. I'd always meant to try one of the theif games, but I think I'll stay away now

No, don't do that.By all means go find a copy of the original or even the second one. Theif is one of the most satisfying games I ever played. And be sure to use headphones, because it had a grounbreaking ability to project 3d sound perception with two speakers which was crucial to the gameplay.

Disappointing. I loved the first Theif, but I may just have to sit this one out.

I know there are exceptions to the rule but I feel like this is what generally occurs with reboots. I mean, you really have to consider the game marketplace as a whole, what new innovations made the previous game so good, what type of gameplay gamers were looking for at the time, etc. All of this factors into how well a game does. When you simply try to reboot or tweak the exact same formula you made last time, sure, that would have made a great sequel the year or two after the original.. but 10+ years later? Gamers' tastes, technology, and the market has completely changed in that time.

This is why I'm a little worried about the next Half-Life. For the past 6 years or so I've been really anxiously waiting, but after seeing reboot after reboot (DNF, anyone?) just fail to capture the imagination of gamers like the original, it's going to be an incredibly difficult target to hit. They did it once before, releasing HL2 almost a decade after HL, but when Valve as a whole is not even putting serious effort into story driven FPSs anymore, it's going to be nearly impossible to break the mold yet again.

Thief 3 was an embarrassing shoehorn—a feature-stripped game that defined "console-itis," with its awkwardly bad zoning and terrible tiny level segments. It was a bad Thief game, especially after the stone-cold perfection that was Thief 2.

Eh. He seems to like Thief 3 so I'll take his recommendation with a big grain of salt.

The RPS review is odd - it sounds like there's very little he actually liked about the game, but he still comes away having enjoyed himself.

I wonder if it's a bit like how I feel about e.g. Elder Scrolls games. I can tell there's an awful lot wrong, and if people ask me about specific annoyances/bugs then I'll generally have to agree - but I still look back at my overall time with the game and say I liked it and would happily shell out for a sequel.

It is too sad. I was able to enjoy the latest Fallout, Deus Ex, and XCom installments, and really had high hopes for Thief. I guess I'll still rent it, just in case the reviewer's tastes differ strongly from my own.

Eh. He seems to like Thief 3 so I'll take his recommendation with a big grain of salt.

The RPS review is odd - it sounds like there's very little he actually liked about the game, but he still comes away having enjoyed himself.

I wonder if it's a bit like how I feel about e.g. Elder Scrolls games. I can tell there's an awful lot wrong, and if people ask me about specific annoyances/bugs then I'll generally have to agree - but I still look back at my overall time with the game and say I liked it and would happily shell out for a sequel.

Yeah, he says at the beginning that the story is terrible, but that's okay because gameplay, and then spends most of the review bitching about the gameplay.

Disappointing. I loved the first Theif, but I may just have to sit this one out.

I know there are exceptions to the rule but I feel like this is what generally occurs with reboots. I mean, you really have to consider the game marketplace as a whole, what new innovations made the previous game so good, what type of gameplay gamers were looking for at the time, etc. All of this factors into how well a game does. When you simply try to reboot or tweak the exact same formula you made last time, sure, that would have made a great sequel the year or two after the original.. but 10+ years later? Gamers' tastes, technology, and the market has completely changed in that time.

This is why I'm a little worried about the next Half-Life. For the past 6 years or so I've been really anxiously waiting, but after seeing reboot after reboot (DNF, anyone?) just fail to capture the imagination of gamers like the original, it's going to be an incredibly difficult target to hit. They did it once before, releasing HL2 almost a decade after HL, but when Valve as a whole is not even putting serious effort into story driven FPSs anymore, it's going to be nearly impossible to break the mold yet again.

[/HL sequel rant]

I'd be more worried about the heat death of the universe than the "next" Half Life game. Either one is just as likely to come first.

I'm disappointed in what I've read here as well. I almost pre-ordered this yesterday from GMG as I received a smoking coupon from them on Friday, but I decided against it. One thing that got me from the trailers was the zombies. Why does everything need to have zombies? World war II zombies. Space zombies. Mystical steampunk zombies. Mayan (Incan? Amazonian?) zombies. ENOUGH WITH THE ZOMBIES!!! Quit trying to make zombies happen! People can be horrible to each other without zombies to drive them. Look at Battlefield! Heck, look at Ukraine!

>>>Verdict: Go buy Dishonored instead. If you already own Dishonored, just play it again.

Yikes. I'd always meant to try one of the theif games, but I think I'll stay away now

No, don't do that.By all means go find a copy of the original or even the second one. Theif is one of the most satisfying games I ever played. And be sure to use headphones, because it had a grounbreaking ability to project 3d sound perception with two speakers which was crucial to the gameplay.

Thought I beat dishonored 2x, I didn't find it all that great of a game (entertaining, but easy even on the hardest difficulty).

Lé sigh.

I should always be wary when game reviews only come out on release day.

of course Dishonored is easy if you know what you are doingyou are essentially a demi-god in a world of humans. If you are quick and smart the game IS a breeze. But the game also allows you to be very creative in your approach and that is where most of the fun is.

Thief 3 was an embarrassing shoehorn—a feature-stripped game that defined "console-itis," with its awkwardly bad zoning and terrible tiny level segments. It was a bad Thief game, especially after the stone-cold perfection that was Thief 2.

I guess I'll continue to play the first two games and hope, one day, for a non-shit sequel. But that day is apparently not today.

edited - and Dishonored was a piss-poor stand-in for a Thief game. It was modern, but it sure wasn't Thief.

Oh Lee can I be your monkeyboy of love? I've been saying this over and over and over to a lot of people and they just don't get it. And I loved everything about the early games, the Builders, the poems about the Trickster...

Thief 2 is probably on my top 3 games list (with Chrono Trigger and Heroes of Might and Magic III for those of you keeping score).

Anyway I'm not very surprised. Everything I've seen about the game has been dissapointing. Early on there were talks about Mirrors Edge (which I really liked btw) and that stuff just do not belong in Thief.

Thought I beat dishonored 2x, I didn't find it all that great of a game (entertaining, but easy even on the hardest difficulty).

Lé sigh.

I should always be wary when game reviews only come out on release day.

of course Dishonored is easy if you know what you are doingyou are essentially a demi-god in a world of humans. If you are quick and smart the game IS a breeze. But the game also allows you to be very creative in your approach and that is where most of the fun is.

Quite. To me the fun in Dishonored isn't _if_ I'll manage to complete the level, it's _how_. Can I ghost it? Can I slit everyone's throats without being seen? Can I just run in guns blazing and murder everyone face to face? What the merry flip is Granny Rags wittering on about now?

AS an aside, I'd love to go back to the original storyline of Dishonored, but with the skills and control systems of the Daoud DLC. They really refined the experience.

Eh. He seems to like Thief 3 so I'll take his recommendation with a big grain of salt.

The RPS review is odd - it sounds like there's very little he actually liked about the game, but he still comes away having enjoyed himself.

I wonder if it's a bit like how I feel about e.g. Elder Scrolls games. I can tell there's an awful lot wrong, and if people ask me about specific annoyances/bugs then I'll generally have to agree - but I still look back at my overall time with the game and say I liked it and would happily shell out for a sequel.

Yeah, he says at the beginning that the story is terrible, but that's okay because gameplay, and then spends most of the review bitching about the gameplay.

I wonder if something that might've made it more 'fun' for him was that he was able to turn off the waypoint marker, and other annoying hand-holding overlay crap that all games seem to have these days. It seems like you can turn everything off if you want, and go HUD-less.

I would love a decent FPS stealth game, where discovery = death. I largely played Metro 2033 stealthily, and it was frustrating and difficult, and sometimes I wished I could just tear in and murder faces, but kept to the shadows and tried to hide everywhere.

It was hard, but super-fun, and I wish there was a game that could reproduce that level of difficult fun.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.